The Next Level

When I think about 2026, the word ‘watering’ continues to come to mind. Gardening, for example, involves preparing land for use (tilling, excavating, cultivating), planting (or sewing) seeds, and then watering and tending to what has been sewn before the sprouts and blooms begin. 2026 feels a lot to me like a watering year. Soaking in depth. Preparing for harvest.

What can this look like personally?

Valuing your inward cultivation (that comes from letting your relationship with God and His word develop you, and all that He’s doing in you, into maturity according to your time and season) over the outward appearance (what things look like). Distinguishing yourself by how you spend your time: applying discipline, spending more time reading and applying God’s word, spending more time studying and researching the things you’re doing now and/or know you’ll do in the future, spending more time consecrating. Now is the time to immerse yourself in studying your craft. Now is the time to take every good work you began in previous years to the next level. Don’t worry about the appearance of what you look like or how what you’re doing looks like to others.

Maybe it’s just me, but if something in you has been feeling this way too, I’d encourage you to lean all the way in. The next level in terms of height actually requires a deeper level in terms of depth. There’s something about 2026 that has a depth to it. It’s time to take everything to the next level.

This is a concept rooted in scripture:

— See Hosea 10:12 (AMP): “Sow with a view to righteousness [that righteousness, like seed, may germinate]; reap in accordance with mercy and lovingkindness. Break up your uncultivated ground, for it is time to seek and search diligently for the Lord [and to long for His blessing] until He comes to rain righteousness and His gift of salvation on you.”

— See Romans 12:2 (MSG): “Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

— See John 15:4-8 (MSG): “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant.”

Another thing I love about the word ‘watering’ is the duality in its meaning. On one hand, it can represent the actions we take to tend to what we’ve sewn in previous seasons. On the other hand, it represents God’s blessings coming down like rain.